Help me - A New Substack Title for "Ask Amanda" (Patreon)

Hey loves

I'll come back in a moment with photos and thank-yous and stuff from tour, BUT....first some fun. 

Here's me comin' at you hot from the covid sick bed with a poll -  I've been meaning to do for a hot second.

So, if you've noticed, my Substack is gaining momentum (hooray, the last post about divorce and TED gained me a few thousand new subscribers) and I've been using it for writing long-form pieces …. and not so much the advice column (the original point of "Ask Amanda").

It seems we are due for a re-branding.

I still have plenty of advice column left in me, but I feel like a larger, broader title can contain occasional "Ask Amanda" posts, and not so much the other way around. So I'm going to strike while the iron is hot and get this little project off the ground. 

The problem is....WHAT DO WE CALL IT?

I may be gradually moving more and more of my writing/publishing traffic over to the substack, depending on how the tools at patreon progress and evolve, and I do love the way the posts over there are easier to read, navigate and comment on. I've spent too many years working on getting this patreon as pitch-perfect as possible, but that doesn't mean I can't slut over to substack (especially just with my long-form stuff) and use both platforms for a while - which I've been doing.

So, a new name?

Right now, the homepage of Ask Amanda looks like this:

https://amandapalmer.substack.com/

Patti Smith's substack - to which I subscribe, and actually read (and watch the videos, and I love her so much) - is simply called "Patti Smith". That's it. Real simple. 

The other substacks that I read with regularity have catchy, informative names: Heather Cox Richardson's "Letters from an American", Roxane Gay's "The Audacity.".

Here's a list of the top ten substacks and their titles and authors:

The Top Substack Newsletters by Traffic:

#1. Letters from an American by Heather Cox Richardson

#2. TK News by Matt Taibbi

#3. Common Sense by Bari Weiss

#4. Noahpinion by Noah Smith

#5. Outside Voices by Glenn Greenwald

#6. Solano NewsNet by a network of volunteers

#7. Huddle Up by Joseph Pompliano

#8. ParentData by Emily Oster

#9. Astral Codex Ten by Scott Alexander

#10. The Popehat Report by Ken White

......

This is how it looks in a search bar:

So here we are.

I could go all Patti Smith and just use my name. Classy.

Or I could use a lyric, or a concept, or....y'know, go WILD.

I want the title to convey seriousness, but also, maybe, playfulness.

In that Amanda-Palmer dark humor kinda way.

My writing is all over the place, it's personal, but it's also about life, and big themes, and ... you know me. It's a little bit of everything. Plus an advice column once in a while. Hm.

I thought about calling it The Everything Blender, or The ____ Blender. Something. But it just seemed too off. I thought about Coin-operated Something (too silly and in-joke), or Ampersand (taken), or...I dunno. "Wait It Gets Worse" was the title I came up with on stage the other night for the New Zealand record (should I ever make one, which I may never. But that just feels TOO dark. Wait It Gets Weirder seems to cover it all, doesn't it. So does It's Just a Ride. Dark, yet light.  Zen as fuck!

I don't have to decide this today. 

I just wanna throw it your way.

Send me ideas.

Entertain me.

I'm in bed with Covid.

(Massive thanks to one of my fav local patrons, Damian, for his gift of Covid supplies today. God I love you guys).

By the way if you're not signed up to the Substack, don't worry, I cross-post everything here....for now. If you don't mind the spamming, sign up. I love you. Thank you.

x

A